A partially redacted court filing released on Tuesday from a federal court in San Jose, California, details just how much Apple (News - Alert) believes it is entitled to in the form of damages from its major legal battle with supplier and competitor, Samsung.
The amount in question, meanwhile, is a whopping $2.525 billion dollars.
Apple believes Samsung (News - Alert) owes Apple an enormous pot of money because it "chose to compete by copying Apple," and thus Apple is entitled to damages, as well as what are described as "reasonable royalty damages," along with Apple's estimates of $500 million in lost profits – for a combined total of $2.525 billion.
Naturally, Samsung objects to Apple's projections, taking only 13 minutes more to release its own statement saying that Apple tried "to stifle legitimate competition and limit consumer choice to maintain its historically exorbitant profits." Further, Samsung believes Apple is the one that should be paying Samsung, compared to the other way around, as it was Samsung's patented technology that led Apple to "become a successful participant in the mobile telecommunications industry."
All of this is leading up to what may very well be the biggest trial Samsung and Apple have ever engaged in: a full jury trial before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, scheduled for July 30. Last week saw Apple's Tim Cook meet with a set of Samsung executives in a bid to iron the whole thing out before it went to trial in a court-supervised mediation, but at last report, a resolution appeared not to be forthcoming.
The dispute arose around a large part of Apple's product line – specifically, the wildly popular iPhone (News - Alert) and iPad lines of devices – and their similarity to a large portion of Samsung's product line. The dispute then became a matter of who stole from whom, and if anyone actually stole at all.
Samsung had at one point adopted what some called the Kubrick Defense, in which Samsung said that no one can "steal" the tablet computer idea as it had previously existed in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, though the defense ultimately didn't work in the German case – making the entire matter a surprisingly complex affair that looked to offer little in the way of a conclusive ending.
But now, a conclusion may be in the making as the jury trial kicks up early next week. The ultimate result of the trial may take plenty of time in its own right to fully pan out, but it will likely be a result that changes the entire electronics market as we know it.